An astronaut from NASA experienced part of his 70th birthday journeying back to Earth, followed by health assessments upon his landing.
Don Pettit, NASA’s oldest active astronaut, emerged from the shuttle alongside two Russian cosmonauts after spending 220 days in space. They landed at a site in Kazakhstan on April 20.
On Twitter, NASA confirmed the safe return of the 70-year-old: “Home sweet Houston. @NASA_Astronauts Don Pettit has officially returned home from the @Space_Station after completing his fourth spaceflight, totaling 590 days in space. A picture perfect mission.”
This wasn’t Pettit’s first time in space. Over his 29-year career, he has participated in several missions, accumulating 370 days in orbit prior to his recent 220 days.
Traveling over 93 million miles and orbiting Earth 3,520 times is physically demanding, particularly considering the collision of their spacecraft with the Kazakh steppes.
After seeing Pettit’s pale appearance, one individual tweeted: “I hope Don Pettit is OK. Soyuz landings can be rough (as seen here). I wonder if he hit his head on something.”
Another added, “He looked out of it.”
A third person wrote: “The commentary indicates that Pettit was in a bad shape after extraction from the capsule.”
Additionally, a fourth remarked: “No images of @astro_Pettit since he was pulled from the Soyuz in a fragile state.”
NASA later tweeted to assure that the veteran astronaut is ‘doing well’.
“According to NASA officials at the landing site, @Astro_Pettit is doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth.
“What’s expected for him? In his own words during an April 16 pre-departure interview, ‘This is a physiological thing. It affects different people different ways. Some people can go out and eat pizza and dance. When I land, it takes me about 24 hours to feel like I’m a human being again.'”
Despite his age, Pettit is not the oldest person to have orbited Earth. That record belongs to the late NASA astronaut John Glenn, who was 77 during his mission in 1998.
John Glenn passed away at the age of 95 in 2016.
On Friday, Pettit shared: “The feeling of being home is directly proportional to how far you have traveled.
“When going out to dinner, you feel home when pulling into the driveway. When touring about for a Sunday drive, you feel home when entering the outskirts of your town. When driving across the United States, perhaps on one of those memorable family vacations, you get a feeling of being home when you cross your state line (be sure to stop and take a family photo).
“When flying international, you feel home the first place your airplane returns to US soil. You may be 2000 miles from home, but you say to yourself, I am home. After having been on Space Station for seven months, we will be returning on our Soyuz spacecraft landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
“When our capsule goes thump on those desert flats, I will be literally on the opposite side of Earth, nearly 12,000 miles from home. Yet I will be home.
“I can picture sometime in the future, a crew returning from Mars and after inserting themselves into low Earth orbit, they will look down at this blue jewel circling below and say, ‘I am Home’.”